Searching for startups at SXSW

At South by Southwest Ashton Kutcher isn’t just the star of ‘Two along that has a Half Men’ along with the producer of Netflix series, ‘The Ranch.’

The former “of which 70s Show” regular happens to be the ultimate tech investor, with an enviable track record: He was an early investor in Twitter, Uber, Spotify, AirBNB, along with many more. For hundreds of entrepreneurs in Austin, he offered the potential for their startup to win funding, along with the kind of high-profile attention of which could bring their company to the next level.

Kutcher has been a fixture at SXSW for years. This particular year, the actor along with Guy Oseary, his fellow partner at Sound Ventures, hosted a startup competition called Perfect Pitch for early-stage entrepreneurs.

After over 0 companies applied, the list was whittled down to a few companies.

Hundreds of people attending SXSW filed into a restaurant in downtown Austin to watch the CEOs do a quick two-minute presentation to a panel of judges, after which they peppered them with questions for six minutes. In addition to Kutcher along with Oseary, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff along with actor Matthew McConaughey also judged the competition.

“We are based in L.A., we see a ton of companies out of San Francisco along with brand-new York. What we wanted to do was recognize along with realize of which companies come through everywhere…they come through the Midwest, the south, come through all across the globe,” said Kutcher in an interview after the competition wrapped up.

“We’ve been coming to SXSW for years, although [right now are] actually doing something of which will be meaningful for companies, of which actually shows along with inspires the entrepreneurial spirit across the country in every market,” he added.

along with Kutcher says the competition will be designed to improve Sound Ventures’ chances of finding a winner: “The more companies you look at, the higher probability of which you are going to find something of which’s great along with I think we found something great today.”

of which “something great” will be an educational platform called ‘LearnLux,’ which offers online tools for financial literacy. LearnLux considers itself a disruptor of the financial services industry, helping millennials learn personal finance skills along with connect them to the resources they need.